In for a Penny, In for a Pound
by SilentSniper
Summary: Friendship blossomed gradually as they were forced to work together for mankind's sake. A collection that deals with the stories of Xiaolin Dragons of past and present. 1: Nothing, but Puppy Love. Raimundo/Kimiko


Disclaimer: Xiaolin Showdown does not belong to me.

* * *

Crooked papa with crooked dirt-yellow teeth once told Raimundo that friends shouldn't fall in love with friends.

"_It just leads to trouble, trouble that bites you in the ass." _

Even though he said it in a no-nonsense hush-hush voice, Raimundo didn't believe him at all.

His pseudo father, desperate to convince him, told him the tale of a friend he used to have long ago when he was a young man. He said that she had been a girl with stars in her eyes. After being her friend his whole life, he told Raimundo that he had fallen in love with her. He said he had married her under the stars.

"_She was happy at first, but then she became bitter and left me and our daughter. She never looked back."_

Raimundo snorted loudly at the man. _"Boring."_

"_I saw her once with a new husband and a beautiful son and another on the way. She broke my heart again that day."_

Raimundo still didn't believe him-thought the man was off his already-falling-apart rocker until he met and befriended a peach girl with dandelion hair and white rice skin. They laughed and they played for many an hour and Raimundo fell in love.

"_Let's dance the night away." _His ever smiling friend said right before he told her he loved her.

She denied him with a wilted, but still sweet smile and left him alone in the playground with a swish of her cute lily skirt; said she didn't want to be the sweetheart of a circus boy, said she liked the paper boy, said that they could still be friends.

After that incident, he took the zigzag man's advice more seriously, even though he knew it was puppy love.

* * *

"Awww, c'mon."

"No."

"Pretty please?"

"No."

She pouted and pushed aside her fountain-like pigtails. "C'mon, please? Just once?"

He crossed his arms stubbornly. "Nope. You know what I always say."

She flicked her wrist flippantly as she exaggerated the motion of rolling eyes. "Yeah yeah, you don't fall in love with friends."

"Yup and that includes _not_ kissing friends."

Kimiko frowned once more as she twisted the frayed and faded hem of her apple-red robe. "But you like me, too."

"You know what happened to my dad and to me. We got our hearts broken by our friends."

She paused and thought and thought until the lights turned on in her head. "Then, I don't wanna be your friend anymore."

"Say what now?"

The girl pecked him quickly on the lips while he was off in his own little world, wondering what the heck just happened and she smiled impishly as he became even more confused. He sat there, thinking his thoughts with wide apple-green eyes, tasting the taste of sour apple lip-gloss as it lingered in the corner of his mouth.

"We're not friends anymore. You can like me back now," she said in a too-chipper voice.

"So…what are we now?"

Kimiko tapped her smudged lip-glossed mouth to the beat of her wandering thoughts. Her head started the thump-a-thump pounding, but thankfully, she found an answer to his vexing question before she got an annoying-like-Spicer headache. She shrugged and snorted. "Dunno."

"We can still kiss, though, right?"

"What would your 'papa' say?"

"He'd say 'go for it!'

She kissed him playfully on his burning cheek. "Good, so now you kiss me!"

Raimundo swallowed the painful nervous lump stuck in his throat. "I-I can't."

She pursed her shiny lips again for the third time. "Why not? We're not friends. It's O.K."

He backed away, his hands in front of him for protection from the temper that was sure to come. "I just can't, O.K?"

"So you don't like me?"

"I do, it's just…I've never kissed a girl," he mumbled with a bashful lisp.

She put her manicured pearl-pink hands on her still-girlish hips. "So? I've never kissed a boy. Papa wouldn't let me."

"Oh."

Challengingly, she crossed her arms over her still flat chest and stared him down. "Kiss me."

He did. Quickly. Very quickly.

"I didn't even feel that," she complained, but melted just the same.

"But I did kiss you. See? Your lip-gloss is smudged," he boasted.

"Whatever. That was when _I_ kissed _you_. We need to kiss more. You know, so _you _can get it right."

"Me? What about you? You stink at kissing!"

Kimiko sniffed none too subtly. "Fine. I just won't kiss you anymore." She buried her face in her no-longer-soft hands as she continued to sniff a little too loudly and waited for Raimundo's predictable reaction.

"I didn't mean it that way, you know that," he pleaded as soon as she started to mope. He had only seen girls and boys liking each other on T.V and in high schools where girls were all pretty and spiffy and nifty, so he could only flounder in the face of Kimiko's crocodile tears. "I thought you were tougher then my girly older sisters."

She peeked at him as she smiled a secret smile. "A girl wants her fairy-tale prince."

"I ain't no prince, but I promise to…" he paused. 'Love you' isn't something that he could promise her, not yet anyways; maybe he could offer her lessons on fighting or a shiny new gadget that doesn't cost a lot.

"Don't promise me anything, not right now, maybe when we're older," she said as she ruffled his hair.

He was about to say something to her, something possibly important, but she shushed gently with a calloused finger. She smiled. They pecked each other on the lips quickly again and continued to try again, just so that they could get a hang of that 'kissing-with-fireworks' thing.

But it was still puppy love to Raimundo and not love and that was O.K.

* * *

New project, in the style of Murderer is Arrogance, Carpe Diam and Waddle Though Clutter. From here on out it is mostly going to be friendship fics for me.


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